About Optics & Photonics TopicsOSA Publishing developed the Optics and Photonics Topics to help organize its diverse content more accurately by topic area. This topic browser contains over 2400 terms and is organized in a three-level hierarchy. Read more.

Topics can be refined further in the search results. The Topic facet will reveal the high-level topics associated with the articles returned in the search results.

Abstract

We describe an experimental breadboard developed for the investigation of nonequilibrium fluctuations induced by macroscopic temperature and concentration gradients under microgravity conditions. Under these conditions the amplitude of the fluctuations diverges strongly for long wavelengths. The setup was developed at the University of Milan and at the University of California at Santa Barbara within the gradient-driven fluctuations experiment (GRADFLEX) project of the European Space Agency, in collaboration with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The apparatus uses a quantitative shadowgraph technique for characterization of the static power spectrum of the fluctuations
S(q) and the measurement of their dynamics. We present preliminary experimental results for
S(q) obtained in the presence of gravity for gradient-driven fluctuations for two cases, those induced in a liquid mixture with a concentration gradient produced by the Soret effect and those induced in a single-component fluid by a temperature gradient.

References

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Citation lists with outbound citation links are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an OSA member, or as an authorized user of your institution.